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Oakville Historical Society

The Hitchcox Letters

Hitchcox Letters

Description

Writing from Belgium on August 13, 1916, Dudley sends a weekly letter to his darling Minnie, describing his experiences near the front lines while performing Red Cross duties. He recounts watching aerial combat, surviving a close-call shell explosion near a field dressing station, and his longing to receive her delayed mail and return home to Toronto.
Hitchcox Letters Number 7 page 1
Hitchcox Letters Number 7 page 1

Transcription

Some where in Belgium. No 142556.

1st Entrenching Batt:

1st Canadian Division

France.

Sunday August 13

 

My Darling Minnie.

 

It's now Sunday afternoon so I must write you my weekly letter. There really hasn't been very much happened this week dearie, but will do my best to make a letter out of what has. The weather has been as usual rather warm and dry, but we would rather have that, than rain, and I am not looking forward to the wet season, as the mud will be something fierce, as its very dusty around this part. 

There are numerous flying machines around here, and we often see air fights, which as a rule don't last very long, one machine was brought down last week, and others as soon as the guns fire at them turn and go back. It's fun watching the shells burst around them in the air, they just look like little white clouds of smoke, when the [?] shells burst they make a dark smoke, so that is the way we can tell who's machines they are. 

The German big guns were shelling a town close to here, the other afternoon and every time they sent a shell over we could hear it coming, they make sort of a whizzing sound then burst the moment they strike the ground, yesterday afternoon, another fellow and I were going to a field dressing station, with two stretchers, and a shell came whizzing by, and dropped ten or twenty yards from us, but as luck had it, it wasn't a very large one. We hardly do anything in the day time here, but every night they send working parties up to the trenches to rebuild, and fix new ones up, and I have to go with the red cross boys in case anything was to happen, in the accident line, I tried to get out of the red cross work when I got to France but they got me back in as soon as I got here. 

Well Minnie dear, they are terribly slow sending the mail from England over here, and I am anxiously waiting for another letter from you but I hope they send them on soon as I feel lost when I don't hear from you, I’ll have to close now dearest as I can't say more, but hope soon to be back in Toronto again. so bye bye dearie with fondest love, from your ever loving

Dudley. XXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Additional photos

Hitchcox Letters Number 7 page 2
Hitchcox Letters Number 7 page 3

Hitchcox Letters Number 7

Description

Writing from Belgium on August 13, 1916, Dudley sends a weekly letter to his darling Minnie, describing his experiences near the front lines while performing Red Cross duties. He recounts watching aerial combat, surviving a close-call shell explosion near a field dressing station, and his longing to receive her delayed mail and return home to Toronto.